In the late 1970s, I began exploring this rugged corner of the Sierra Nevada with a small group of high-school friends. Back then, adventure meant freedom — winding mountain roads, cold streams, and the discovery of places that seemed untouched by time. I don’t return here often, but when I do, it always feels like stepping into a dream half-remembered.
On this particular trip in the fall of 2025, I arrived just as the first storms of the season rolled through. Low-hanging clouds drifted across the ridges, wrapping the jagged bluffs in soft, shifting light. At roughly 5,000 feet, the air was cool and charged with moisture — that unmistakable scent of pine and rain mingling in the mist.
What drew me to stop and set up the camera was the contrast — the dark, angular rock rising from lush, rain-soaked greens, and the way the trees faded gracefully into the clouds. It was a fleeting moment of balance, where the rough and the delicate coexisted in harmony.
Photographed in panoramic X-Pan format with my medium-format camera, this image captures not just the landscape, but the feeling of being suspended between worlds — the tangible and the ethereal, the past and the present.
